


A Kinder Fate

by Topaz_Eyes



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, Episode: s03e08-09 Human Nature/Family of Blood, Gen, Guilt, Minor Character Death, Mirrors, Rare Pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:25:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Topaz_Eyes/pseuds/Topaz_Eyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd deserved every word of her rebuke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kinder Fate

**Author's Note:**

> References to "Human Nature/Family of Blood" by Paul Cornell, "The End of Time" by Russell T. Davies, and "The Lodger" by Gareth Roberts; dialogue taken verbatim from "Family of Blood."

Amy was sitting at her dressing table in her bedroom on the TARDIS, drawing a hairbrush through her hair, when she first noticed the flicker of movement behind her.

Startled, Amy glanced back but saw nothing except the outline of her closed bedroom door. She pursed her lips, wondering if the TARDIS was playing tricks; the TARDIS liked to move objects around for fun. But there was nothing there, certainly no one behind her door; shrugging, she turned back to the mirror, finished getting ready, and paid no more mind to it that day.

The next morning (such as it was on the TARDIS), she saw a small flurry of motion behind her again as she applied powder to her cheeks. Amy peered carefully: in the mirror, her bedroom door cracked open behind her, though Amy was sure the door was latched. This time a small, blonde head peeked around it, with a flash of red above. Just a glimpse, then the ghost was gone in a blink, the door closed behind.

Amy shook her head to clear it. Her eyes were playing tricks, she thought. Had she just seen a red balloon?

A few days later, as Amy sat blow-drying her hair, the door in her mirror cracked open again, with another flash of red. Amy continued drying her hair as if she didn't notice, and waited, determined to catch her little visitor.

Soon enough, the small, blonde head peeked from behind the dark oak. Amy switched off the hair dryer and waved to the figure in her mirror. "Hello there."

The apparition froze, its eyes wide, then ducked back. Amy reached out towards the door's reflection before it could close.

"Hey, it's okay. Come on out, I'd love to meet you. Come on."

After a minute, the apparition sidled out, pressing itself against the door as if ready to flee. It was a little girl, about eight years old. Her long hair was tied back with a ribbon; she wore a white lace dress and a tan coat, and didn't smile. So solemn, Amy thought, like one of those old sepia photographs on the wall of Aunt Sharon's house.

"That's better. What's your name?"

Skittish, the girl edged toward the door again.

"Oh come on, I don't bite. My name's Amy, what's yours?"

The little girl shook her head vehemently. "So you don't want me to know, or you can't say?" Amy asked. A forlorn expression settled on the little girl's face. Poor thing, Amy thought. Then out of the blue, a name popped into her head.

"You know, you look like a Lucy to me. Can I call you Lucy?"

The little girl nodded her acquiescence, so Lucy she became. Over the next several days, Lucy appeared off and on, shy at first, but under Amy's friendly overtures she grew steadily bolder, moving away from the door and closer to the dressing table with its assortment of hair and makeup products.

Like a little girl idolizing her big sister, Lucy was always, always fascinated by Amy's beauty regimen. She stared longingly while Amy brushed her hair, applied under-eye concealer, mascara, and lip gloss; fastened necklaces, snapped on earrings, wound her red scarf round her neck. Once or twice she'd reach out in wonder, as if to touch Amy's hair.

Amy took Lucy in stride; she had seen far stranger things with the Doctor, so a little girl in her mirror was nothing to bother him about. She knew the TARDIS rattled with all sorts of mysteries; this was just another one. And Amy liked the company; it was fun to have someone to chat with while she dressed for the day, even if Lucy was only a silent companion.

One day Amy hauled in an armful of ballgowns from the TARDIS wardrobe and threw them onto her bed. The Doctor was taking her dancing on Garflaxa. In the mirror, Lucy was waiting; by now she'd grown confident enough to move to the front of the room, and she sat on the edge of the dressing table, her feet dangling.

Amy clutched a plum-colored taffeta dress to her chest, followed by a cobalt-blue velvet sheath and an emerald-green satin evening gown. "So what do you think? Purple, blue or green?"

Lucy pointed at the green dress Amy held and nodded.

"Oh, you like this one? Well, I like it too." She shoved the other gowns aside and lay the green dress on the bed. "Let's pick out a necklace and some earrings for it."

She pulled a drawer open and rummaged through its contents until she'd pulled out a small red jewelry case. As she opened it, she asked, "You know, I've always meant to ask, why are you always in the mirror? Are you stuck? Can't you come out of there?"

Lucy's face fell and she stared down at her button-up shoes.

"Oh, that's okay, you don't have to tell me why," Amy soothed. "We all have secrets." She pulled out a gold chain necklace with an emerald heart-shaped pendant. "What do you think of this with the green?"

Her bedroom door burst open and a voice boomed behind her. "Hello, Amy!"

Lucy's eyes flew wide and she ducked beneath the dressing table, out of sight. Amy looked up to see the Doctor's reflection. "Don't you knock?" Amy said crossly. "I could have been naked!"

"Knocking on a closed door? Oh yes, one of those quaint human rituals."

"It's called respecting my privacy, Doctor."

He spun on his heel, paying no heed. "Now I heard voices in here, so I doubt you'd have been naked. Who were you talking to?"

"Oh, just Lucy," Amy replied, "my friend in the mirror."

The Doctor stopped cold and did a double-take. Amy cocked her head, raising an eyebrow.

"Who is she? Do you know her?"

The Doctor's face shuttered. "It doesn't matter."

"Oh yes it does. Tell me, Doctor."

He turned away, muttering something barely intelligible, that might have sounded like 'A terrible mistake.'

"Fine, then, be that way," Amy harrumphed. When she turned back to the mirror, Lucy had run off, and did not reappear; and the Doctor had disappeared too.

* * *

After wandering aimlessly around the TARDIS corridors for what seemed like forever, the Doctor found himself in the library. Bypassing the swimming pool completely, he headed to the shelf that housed early twentieth century biographical fiction, where he pulled a book off the shelf: _A Journal of Impossible Things_ , first edition, its frontispiece signed by Verity Newman.

The book weighed dense in his hands. It was neat, polished, a prime example of twenty-first century publishing; an immaculate dust cover with that oh-so-familiar watch-that-wasn't lay emblazoned on the front. But when he opened the book he saw not the gleaming title page, but the battered diary, felt the leather skin-warm under his fingers. The crisp, acid-free paper dissolved into the ink-stained pages of memory, the diary with its spine broken, dog-eared pages falling out; the neat typeset morphed into the hurried scrawls of dreams captured before they winked out of existence, into another lifetime that never was.

At least for John Smith; the lifetime had been very much his own.

He still knew each page of Smith's diary by heart, remembered each event as if it had happened yesterday, even though his Time Lord consciousness had been sequestered in the watch for most of it. He flipped to the last chapter. He knew how this scene went, at least from his side. Now he read Joan's version. As he did he heard the rise and fall of Joan's gentle voice across the span of years.

>   
> _"Is it done?" I inquired._
> 
> _"It's done," he replied._
> 
> _I dared not ask what events had transpired with the Family. I had no doubt that whatever justice the Doctor had meted out on them had been swift, severe, and absolute. That was all I needed to know; they had destroyed so many lives, but I did not think I could bear any further detail as to their fate._
> 
> _"Police and the army are at the school," I offered instead. "The parents have come to take the boys home. I should go. They'll have so many questions. I'm not sure what to say."_
> 
> _I turned around then, and nearly staggered from the sharp blow of grief to my heart. He leaned in the doorway, this man--no, this being, the Doctor, who was only the shape of a man, who wore John's face and body so facilely I could scarcely withstand it. Yet I could not afford to display such emotion in front of this stranger; for dear John's sake, I willed myself to remain strong._
> 
> _"Oh, you look the same. Goodness, you must forgive my rudeness. I...find it difficult to look at you. Doctor, I must call you Doctor."_

Wincing, he looked up from the pages. How callous he'd been then, how badly behaved he'd been throughout that episode toward everyone. He skimmed further, until he came to: _If the Doctor had never visited us, if he'd never chosen this place on a whim...would anyone here have died?_

He'd deserved every word of her rebuke. "Oh, Joan Redfern," he murmured, "how right you were about me."

The book had color reproductions of John Smith's journal pages throughout the book, organized in roughly chronological sections. In the third collection he found Joan's 1913 portrait, her smile grown wistful. The Doctor lay his thumb on her cheek. So many had borne the brunt of his whim: Joan, Martha, the Family--

"Lucy."

Once a year, every year, that had been the arrangement; but after the first year he'd forgotten and hadn't visited her since. He rushed to the mirror that hung across from the entrance to the library. He straightened his bow tie though it didn't need it, and waited.

And soon enough there she was, peeking from a crack in the door, the alien who usurped Lucy Cartwright and wore her face. "Hello, Sister-of-Mine," he greeted.

Lucy hung back by the door, her brow furrowed; gripping her balloon string tight, she shook her head.

"Yes, it's me," the Doctor said. "I've changed my appearance from the last time you saw me, but I'm still the Doctor." Still your jailer, he thought, wincing again.

Lucy cocked her head, considering, then approached until she stood beside him. He bowed his head for a moment, his face contorting in memory. He then drew back and touched the silvered glass. "I am so sorry, Sister-of-Mine. It's been such a long time in the mirror for you now, hasn't it? Ninety-seven years? Always on the outside, looking in."

Lucy nodded, solemn; her fingers brushed the reflection of his own.

"I think it's been more than long enough, don't you?"

She raised her eyebrows, hope daring to flicker across her wan face.

"I can't rescue your mum and dad, but I can reunite you with your brother. Is that all right?"

She broke into a wide smile and nodded eagerly.

"But you know what will happen after that."

The smile faded, and she swallowed. After a moment she nodded again.

"Yes, I suppose it would be welcome now. All right, then. I promise you, Sister-of-Mine, it won't be much longer you'll have to spend alone."

He turned on his heel and loped to the TARDIS control room, where Amy already stood by the console: her hair upswept into a fancy roll, bare shoulders dusted with glimmering powder, her emerald satin gown perfectly fitted in the bodice and falling gracefully to the floor. The matching gemstone pendant sparkled at her neck. A pair of green dance slippers hung suspended from her hand.

"Doctor, I'm ready!"

The Doctor jumped around the console. "Change of plans, Pond. Dancing on Garflaxa will have to wait."

Hands on her hips, Amy scowled at him. "What? I spent three hours getting ready!"

He glanced at her. "Yes, you look fine," he said, waving dismissively, "but that'll hardly do for where we're going. You'll want something comfortable to wear, something suitable to commit minor vandalism in."

Amy opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. She shot him another dirty look, hiked her skirts and stormed off, feet stomping on the glass floor. The Doctor, however, didn't notice; he was already dialing in their destination.

* * *

Over the last hundred years, the village of Farringham had grown into a sizable town around the lonely hillock where the scarecrow stood guard. The knoll was surrounded by rows of neat council houses, whose back yards faced onto it; a narrow dirt lane encircled it, with a chain link fence cordoning it off. But despite all the newer buildings, the knoll itself was overgrown, skeletons of climbing ivy tangled about the pole. Nobody, it seemed, had ever walked upon the ground in a century.

The TARDIS landed between two dust bins set out in the lane. It was November, and drizzly; the overcast evening sky threatened outright rain as the Doctor and Amy, now garbed in jeans and jacket, stepped outside. "Of course," the Doctor said wryly, looking up, "it never stopped raining then, either."

Amy cocked an eyebrow at the hill. The Doctor answered before she could ask. "I suspended it in time," the Doctor said. "This ground is just as it was in 1913. No one can alter it in any way except us. Come along, Pond, we have work to do." He scaled the six-foot-tall fence and dropped down onto the ground. Amy huffed, then followed.

They squelched through ankle-deep mud, uphill to the pole where the scarecrow hung. As they reached the peak, the sky opened, drenching them with buckets of rain. Hair instantly plastered to his head, the Doctor withdrew his sonic screwdriver from his coat pocket and drew it down the length of the scarecrow.

Amy jumped back at a tingle along her arm. "Ouch! What just happened?" she yelled over the torrent.

"I broke the stasis lock and returned the land to the present. Quick, now, he hasn't got much time. Perhaps an hour at most."

"Who?"

The Doctor had to shout to be heard. "The scarecrow. Now, I'll support him, and you untie the ropes holding him up."

Amy frowned at him, but stood on tiptoe and tugged at the rough lashes supporting the scarecrow on the pole while the Doctor braced himself underneath. When she released the last knot, the scarecrow fell onto the Doctor's shoulder. He fell to his knees under its weight, splashing mud upwards. "Ooof!"

"I didn't know straw weighed so much," Amy said, helping him to his feet.

"Yes, well, you learn something new every day. Come on, he's destabilizing, we need to get him back to the TARDIS."

Between them, the Doctor and Amy carried the limp figure to the fence. She climbed over first, followed by the Doctor with the scarecrow hanging limp over his shoulder. Hoisting the weight between them, together they staggered down the dark lane back to the TARDIS.

They lay the dripping-wet scarecrow on the glass floor by the door. The Doctor jumped to the console and set the controls for space. When the TARDIS' temporal engines were groaning, he ran out of the room. He returned a minute later, wheeling a full-length mirror which he set up nearby. He then knelt beside the scarecrow and removed its burlap mask.

Amy gasped. "Wait, that's--that's not a scarecrow," she said, backing away. "That's a person."

"Yes," the Doctor replied. "Well, not really, he was a person once, Jeremy Baines, but he's not now, though, hasn't been for a very long time. Hello, Brother-of-Mine."

Baines blinked and looked around. "Where am I?" he asked, his voice raspy; he peered at Amy. "And who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor, this is Amy, and you're on my TARDIS."

"Doctor." Baines tensed, his mouth tightening. "How long has it been?"

"Ninety-seven years. What do you last remember?"

Baines pinned him with a steely glare. "What you did to my father, my mother and my sister."

Amy frowned at the Doctor. "What did you do?"

"A punishment went too far." The Doctor met Baines' gaze. "You're right to be angry with me," he acknowledged, "I was a different man then, but that's no excuse. I am truly sorry and I don't expect you to accept any apology from me. But I do have someone here for you, Brother-of-Mine."

He stood up, went to the mirror, and pressed his fingers against the silvered glass. It began to ripple, and a child-sized hand reached out. The Doctor grasped it, and helped Lucy step out from the mirror. Lucy ran to her brother's side and flung herself across him.

"Brother-of-Mine!" she shrieked.

"Sister-of-Mine," he breathed.

"Lucy," Amy said, "you found your brother!" She nudged the Doctor and grinned. "It's a family reunion! All right, Doctor!"

The Doctor sighed. Lucy scrambled up, pulling Baines with her. "What about our parents?" Baines asked.

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry you can't all be reunited," he said heavily. "I can't break your father's dwarf-star chains, or rescue your mother from the event horizon of the collapsing galaxy. Forgive me. This is the best I can do. I can't hope to think it's adequate enough." He opened the door of the TARDIS.

Baines and Lucy faced them, their hands clasped. "You're releasing us," Baines said, "but why?"

"Ninety-seven years is a long time for you lot to suffer the way you did. It's time you found your peace."

"Thank you," Baines said, and Lucy waved at Amy. They then began to fade from view.

"Doctor, what's happening to them?" Amy asked, confused.

"It's all right, Amy," the Doctor soothed. "They'll be all right."

"They're dying," Amy realized. Her eyes welled with tears, and she clutched his elbows. "They can't die, they're just kids. Save them. Please."

He gazed at her with an infinitely sad expression. "I am saving them, Pond."

She stared at him, bewildered. "How?"

He didn't answer; he'd turned his attention to the Family, whose bodies were dissolving into atoms. "Goodbye," he whispered, as Baines and Lucy dissipated into wisps.

"I-I can't watch this," Amy said, and turned her head away with a quiet sob.

"We must, Amy," the Doctor said gently, "so we can remember them."

Amy reluctantly raised her head. "Goodbye," she whispered through her tears. And they watched soberly, as the beings who were once Brother-of-Mine and Sister-of-Mine drifted out of the TARDIS and into the vastness of space. Only Lucy's balloon remained, to float high into the vaulted ceiling.

The TARDIS fell silent save for the pulse of the Time Rotor. Amy turned on him, her fists clenched. "You let them die." She pounded his arms. "You LET them. How could you?"

He stilled her wrists. "Because there are fates far worse than death," the Doctor said. "Once upon a time I forgot. Or maybe I remembered it too well. Either way they paid the price."

The Doctor pulled Amy into a fatherly hug and kissed her forehead. "I'm an old man, Amy," he continued as she sniffled, "a very old man, and I've seen so much more than you can imagine. Sometimes death is the kindest fate of all."

She drew back; her mascara had smudged on her cheeks. "I don't believe that."

He raised her chin. "Of course you wouldn't." He pulled her into another, longer hug, and when he drew back again he smiled at her. "It's time to go on now, Amy Pond. From death to life. And I promised you dancing on Garflaxa."

Amy sniffed and swiped at her cheek. "It's going to take another three hours to get ready."

"Nonsense! Really, you humans and your grooming rituals. You can go just like this, you know, the Garflaxans won't mind. Actually, now I think of it, their dress code requires that all their formal wear be covered in mud. You're perfect!"

Amy punched his arm. "Stop pulling my leg."

"I'm not, you know, they really do like mud--"

"Oh please. Speaking of mud, I'm going to change," she said. She marched off, brushing clumps of drying mud off her clothes. "Into my gown. And we'd better be on the dance floor in Garflaxa when I come back!"

Hands shoved in his pockets, the Doctor watched Amy leave. When she was out of sight, safely alone in the control room, he withdrew a small, red velvet box. He opened it to stare at the forgotten engagement ring inside. Rory's ring, for Amy.

Forgotten. Oh, Rory. "A kinder fate," he said quietly. He snapped the box shut and placed it back in his pocket.


End file.
